“We acknowledge the importance of community, because we each have experienced a lack thereof at multiple points during our academic careers.”
Ashlee, Zamora and Karikari, 2017.
Some of the biggest struggles for people of color going into graduate school are that we don’t know much about it, we don’t know that we need it, and more importantly, we don’t know how to or believe that we can’t pay for it. In today’s economy, the value of a Bachelor’s degree is severely inflated because the number of people attaining this degree has been progressively increasing over the past decades. Because this was the goal for so many generations, particularly for people of color, students rarely have a plan for what comes after.
The truth is, while white college graduates are more likely to increase their wealth and reach financial independence in the years following their graduation, black and brown college graduates are less likely to achieve the same. The reason: in most cases, college graduates of color are either the first or part of the first generation of people in their families to attain such level of education; so when their families ask for help, they give it. Financial insecurity, lack of mentorship and structural support altogether, are the main reasons why graduate school does not typically seem like an option for students of color.
The graphs above represent the findings of a research study conducted between 2005 and 2015. In the study, the researchers found that while the number of Latinx undergraduate student enrollment in Hispanic-serving Institutions (HSI) in the West Coast of the United States increased by almost 12%, the enrollment of Latinx students in graduate programs increased by 6%. This statistics serves as a reflection of our hypothesis that students of color are more likely to join the workforce after earning a Bachelor’s degree than considering graduate school as an option. A different research study showed that the standardized testing utilized to select students for some graduate and doctoral programs, such as the GRE, is preventing primarily students of color from accessing such academic spaces. The researchers state that although the myth or meritocracy behind standardized testing hides the structural racial inequalities in education, it continues to be a central part of the graduate admissions process at many elite institutions.
What happens to the small percentage of students of color that make it into Grad school, you ask?
Through exploring and researching, my colleague and I found that there is a tendency for graduate and doctoral programs to place much of the responsibility of succeeding (or failing) in these spaces in personal drive, and very little in the structures that offer support to their students. In the case of students of color, the lack of support in areas of struggle such as the prevalence of impostor syndrome, the tendency of students coming from community colleges, the lack of knowledge concerning the “rules” of graduate education and feelings of not belonging, are important factors that contribute to student’s desire to stay in their graduate programs.
What can be done?
We believe that in order for measures to be implemented to help mitigate this issue, the first step is to get people of color in positions where they can serve as role models for students of color. As obvious as this may sound, not enough mentors of color are recruited at all levels of higher education, in order for students to gain access to knowledge that can guide them into the spaces that for too long have been primarily occupied by the white majority and the “model minorities.”
“If people of color are not present at the decision-making table, nobody believes that the problem is urgent… When there’s no sense of belonging, and there’s no sense of urgency, cycles of racial injustice will continue to perpetrate.” – Laura Mae Lindo
This is why along with making a greater effort in recruiting professors and administrative staff of color, and ensuring a working environment that will allow for these faculty members to want to stay in these institutions, we have thought of other measures that could help:
- More federally funded programs that will aide and assist students of color in accessing graduate school programs;
- Outreach programs that will begin at the High school level that can lead students of color towards graduate school education;
- Graduate and doctoral programs would benefit from making connections with Colleges and other higher education institutions that serve primarily students of color to create pipelines for their students to access these spaces; and
- Expanding curricular and compositional diversity in institutions to facilitate close, supportive and encouraging relationships for students of color.
Being educated and being white, is not interchangeable.”
